As a keen amateur
astronomer I was used to observing visually with my local
astronomical society, the Breckland Astronomical Society, with the
club’s 19 inch reflector or my own 70 mm refractor and 8 inch
reflector. This often ended in frustration due to cloudy skies.

On joining a second local
society, the Norwich Astronomical Society as well as Breckland, I
became intrigued by the pair of radio dishes they had erected at the
observatory. Questions revealed that a former member had obtained
these dishes had erected them then moved away from the area.

I thought to myself “this
is the answer to cloudy skies” and proceeded to gather
information about observing at wavelengths other than visual. One of
my early discoveries on Internet searches was the NASA Radio Jove
Project that encourages high schools to observe the decametric
emissions from Jupiter using relatively simple and reasonably cheap
equipment.

I downloaded all the plans
for the antenna and receiver then sought out some assistance before
committing to the purchase of the necessary components. One of the
members of both societies is a professional radio and TV engineer and
keen amateur radio enthusiast. I had spent some time doing visual
observation and CCD imaging with him and enlisted his help.

Diagram of antenna.

Among his archives was a
photocopy of an article from the December 1989 edition of Sky and
Telescope entitled ‘Build a 21 MHz Jupiter Antenna’ by
David Rosenthal that described the construction of a low cost antenna
designed to be used with a short wave receiver to listen to Jupiter’s
decametric emissions.

This looked very
attractive as a first step on the road to radio astronomy so I built
my own modified version using the Sky and Telescope plans. The
antenna was linked to a cheap multiband radio receiver via some
ordinary television co-axial cable. This was achieved by removing
most of the supplied telescopic antenna and fitting a co-axial
connector in its place.

Picture showing TV coaxial connector replacing radio's antenna.

Connection of coaxial cable to antenna.

The only things I had to
buy were the copper wire, the co-axial cable and the little multiband
radio, everything else was to hand as left overs from domestic and
garden projects. The total cost of the materials I have estimated at
well under £50 including the radio.

A radio telescope for under 50 pounds!

My first target was the
Sun and as we had just passed solar maximum there were still periodic
outbursts of sunspots, which generate massive radio emissions that
could be clearly heard via the radio loudspeaker. Swinging the
antenna across the Sun revealed the wide angle that the radio Sun
occupies in the sky.

Trace of the sun with this telescope.

This was last September
and as Jupiter became an evening object in the late autumn skies I
began to listen to the sounds of Radio Jove via my simple set up.

Trace of Jupiter with this telescope.

Trace of quiet sky for comparison.

This is not without
problems, the main one being that the 18 to 25 MHz band is crowded
with terrestrial transmissions. This can get to be so bad that no
observations are possible and at other times fortunately the
ionosphere becomes less reflective and Radio Jove can be easily
heard.

The other big problem is
that Jupiter does not transmit constantly at decametric wavelengths.
The orbit of the satellite Io through the magnetically created torus
of matter that surrounds Jupiter creates spectacular but only
sporadic bursts of emissions that are still very much the subject of
study and quantification. Tables for predicting the likelihood of
Jovian radio emissions may be downloaded from the University of
Florida’s website.

To complete the apparatus
I have recently begun to feed the sounds via the earpiece jack to a
simple audiocassette recorder then play them back through the sound
card of my PC. This allows me to run the emissions through Radio
Sky’s Radio-Sky Pipe software to create a visual and measurable
record.

This software in its basic
form is available as a free download from Radio Sky’s website.
I have included some of my better Radio-Sky Pipe traces in these
pages and they may be compared with verified traces from the Radio
Jove site.

Picture of me with the antenna. Looking on are Mark Lawrik-Thompson (FRAS and chair of NAS) and his wife, Helen.(Picture courtesy of Mark Humphrys of the Norwich Astronomical Society)